Hot and sour rhubarb pork and noodles

Tangy rhubarb is used to make a hot and sour sauce for a delicious Asian-inspired pork and noodle dish that is bursting with flavor.

Bruschetta chicken pasta

An easy and very flavorful pasta dinner that is perfect for late summer when garden tomatoes and basil are fresh and abundant. This Bruschetta Chicken Pasta is a delicious family dinner.

Tofu & mushroom miso ramen bowls

This ramen is full of delicious flavors of miso, ginger, garlic, mushrooms, sesame, and more! Give your ramen noodles a makeover with the flavorful recipe for tofu and mushroom miso ramen bowls.

Slow cooker sausage pasta e fajioli soup

Disclosure: This recipe is being shared as part of #NationalSlowCookerMonth. I received products from our event sponsor Camellia Brand Beans for this post. As always, all opinions are my own.

Hearty, warming, and delicious soup is what you need on a cold winter day. This slow cooker soup is full of vegetables, beans, sausage, and pasta for a complete and filling meal.

Slow cooker creamy chicken and tomato pasta sauce

This creamy, flavorful, and simple pasta sauce is sure to become a family favorite! Your slow cooker does the work and you have a hearty dish for a weeknight dinner.

Pumpkin Alfredo pasta with chicken

Creamy and savory pumpkin Alfredo sauce with sage, chicken, and pasta is a delicious autumn evening dinner. 

Picnic macaroni salad

This picnic macaroni salad is a perfect classic cookout dish to bring to a summer party or family barbecue. It's full of flavorful and color and is easy to put together.

Spätzle

Homemade Spätzle are a delicious side dish to make in the fall and winter. They are perfect with sausages, Schnitzel, a cheese sauce, and more. 

Slow cooker eggplant "baked" ziti

Pasta cooked with eggplant and tomato sauce and topped with gooey mozzarella cheese all comes together in your slow cooker! This is a perfect summertime meal that won't heat up your kitchen and to use seasonal eggplant.

Balsamic chicken caprese pasta

A delicious summertime pasta dinner made with garden fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella, and balsamic glazed chicken! This pasta dish can be enjoyed hot, warm, or cold straight out of the fridge. 

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It's a lovely dish for a late summer evening, especially if you are lucky enough to have garden fresh grape or cherry tomatoes and basil. Our basil plant is one of the few things doing really well in our garden this year and while we have been getting a few grape tomatoes, I still had to buy some of those for this dish. 

Hopefully next year's garden is more successful, though a lot of it has to do with the crazy weather we've been having here this summer, so who knows.

Chicken, gnocchi, and spinach soup

We aren't having a very cold December here in the Buffalo area, if you can believe it. In fact, we haven't even had a measurable snow fall yet! It's crazy and we've actually broken a record for the latest measurable snow fall. It's been in the 40s and 50s, which is unheard of in December if Buffalo. It doesn't feel like the holidays at all. But, that doesn't stop me from making and consuming cozy warming soups. It's high soup season in my kitchen! 

Now, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, my husband isn't always a huge soup fan. It's gotta be a really hearty soup for him to feel like it's a full meal. This soup definitely fits that bill because it's full of vegetables, chicken, and little gnocchi pillows - it's a complete meal with a thick and creamy broth. A hearty bread is never a bad idea to sop all the leftover broth at the end! This soup will serve about four people. It's perfect for a wintery evening or afternoon. 

Butternut squash macaroni and cheese with hazelnut crumble

The wind chills and snow are hitting us hard lately here in western NY! I actually had a snow day from my regular job this past Friday. That means it's time for comfort foods that warm up your belly and soul.

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Butternut squash mac n' cheese is something that I used to make rather frequently, then I didn't make it for a couple of years (not sure why - maybe because I was making so many other kinds like this and this and this). Surprisingly, it never ended up on the blog until now. To make it even more delicious, I've added a hazelnut crumble topping.  

We do like to go out and snowshoe, hike, and birdwatch in the winter, but lately it's been just too cold and so bitterly windy that we have been laying low in our free time. 

That means warm blankets, knitting, too much Netflix, steaming mugs of tea, and warming comfort food. When I make mac n' cheese, it's usually the main course for our meal. A side salad helps round it out a lot. This dish will serve about four to six people as a main dish. 

Also, I recently got a smartphone (for the first time ever!) and am finally on Instagram - it would be awesome if you would follow me (and I'll try to follow you back). You can also find me on Facebook and Pinterest. 

Cajun chicken and pepper pasta

 

I threw this pasta dish together on a whim and it turned out to be a keeper that we will be having again (and again). 

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I was able to incorporate a few herbs I dried last fall from our herb garden. It was really delicious - spicy, but not too hot, creamy, and a touch sweet from the peppers and onions. It was good for a cold night which is what we are having a lot of lately. I do like winter and snow, but the cold is starting to get to me this year. It didn't help that my work office is freezing cold (though I did receive a space heater this week, and I'm super happy and thankful for that). I'm hoping that this weekend we can get a snow shoe in since we should still have snow and it shouldn't be in the negative temperatures! 

This pasta dish would be nice to make after spending some time outside because the spice will help to warm you up from the inside out! This dish should feed 4-6 people.

French onion macaroni and cheese

This is some serious comfort food - cheesy, creamy, and buttery. The flavors of French onion soup wrapped up in some noodles and extra cheese. 

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I've seen some similar recipes floating around on the internet for a while now and have been itching to make this mac n' cheese. I wanted to incorporate as many flavors from French onion soup as I could, but I also wanted to keep this meal vegetarian - so I didn't use any beef broth. It turned out pretty amazing. 

The super sweet onion intertwined with the cheesy pasta was perfect. I used Gruyere cheese, but I combined it with sharp white cheddar so that it was not over powering (and affordable -- Gruyere is pretty pricey and pungent). 

Thyme, vermouth, and buttery breadcrumbs pulled in a lot of the soup flavors I was looking for in the dish. The result was a decadent pasta dish that we thoroughly enjoyed.

This recipe will feed 4 to 6 people as a main dish (feel free to make a nice green salad for the side) or make some delicious lunch leftovers.

Chicken, butternut squash, and spinach skillet pasta bake

We had the hugest butternut squash I have even seen. It came from my father-in-law's garden and was just really massive. We used 1/3 of it to make a side dish for Thanksgiving (that produced leftovers) - that's how big it was. 

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So, needless to say, we've been eating a lot of butternut squash. I threw this pasta dish together using a lot of leftovers -- more of the squash, some chicken, a hunk of mozzarella, etc. It was a really satisfying and tasty pasta dish and was a perfect meal for a cold and snowy evening. 

This dish will feed about 4-6 people, so we had a lot of lunch leftovers (my favorite).

Apple and pork macaroni and cheese

Fall flavors come together in this rich and creamy skillet apple and pork macaroni and cheese. 

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This past weekend was a fun and food-filled one. On Saturday I spent the day at the 10th Annual World on Your Plate conference. I attended some workshops, listened to speakers, ate delicious local food, and met some great people. 

Then on Sunday I canned (again) - this time applesauce and a hot & sweet chili-garlic sauce. Last weekend we went apple picking at LynOaken Farms where they have a lot of heritage apples - so we were able to pick and sample all kinds of different apples this year.  It was a lovely day and it is definitely one of my favorite fall activities. 

Even though I make a bunch of applesauce, and we eat an apple a day after picking, we always end up with a lot to use. Of course, I'll make a pie, but I like to try out apples in other dishes as well. Hence this super decadent autumn mac n' cheese. 

I was left with a bit of applesauce that wouldn't fit in one my my jars, so I used it in this dish along with some local pastured pork, spices, and creamy cheese sauce. It's autumn in a dish. I served this mac n' cheese with a side of roasted romanesco. 

It's a really rich dish, so a vegetable is highly recommended. It will easily serve about 6 people.

Seared scallops over pearl couscous with peas and garlic scape sauce

This dish is a lovely early summer dinner full of fresh sweet peas and slightly spicy garlic scapes. 

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Garlic scapes are something I look forward to now that I've discovered their tastiness. If you haven't tried them yet, keep your eyes open at the farmers' market. You'll love them if you are a fan of garlic and they make delicious pesto and sauces, or can just be sauteed with some vegetables. 

Checkout this article from Backyard Boss for more information and ideas for eating garlic scapes. They aren't around long, so grab some soon! 

This dish was inspired by the garlic scapes and fresh peas I bought at the market last weekend. I knew I wanted to pair the peas with pearl (or Israeli) couscous to match the size and shape of the peas. After a search at the grocery store, I finally found some. 

The scallops were a treat too - a delicious and elegant way to top off this dish. This recipe will make a nice dinner for two. Perfectly romantic, except for all the garlic breath....

Penne and asparagus carbonara

Spring time is asparagus time and we just can't get enough of it. I love asparagus - but this is really the only time of year that you can get it fresh and it's a short time. 

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We pick up a couple pounds a week and eat it in all different ways while we can. I love simple roasted asparagus as a side dish, but I also love to incorporate it into main dishes and breakfast. Asparagus pairs perfectly with eggs and bacon. So when I was flipping through Jamie Oliver's Jamie at Home (still one of my favorite cookbooks ever) and saw his beautiful zucchini carbonara I was inspired to make a similar dish with asparagus. 

I also picked up some fresh pastured eggs and cream at the farmer's market, some high quality bacon, and used fresh oregano from my herb garden. This dish was truly delicious and decadent. While it may not be classic carbonara, that's OK with me - it was pretty spectacular! 

This recipe will make a lot of pasta and is best eaten right away - it will serve at least four people. Serve it with some fresh crusty bread to pick up any sauce at the bottom of your bowl.

Pad (Pat) Thai

It is starting to warm up nicely here. Over the weekend we went hiking and saw a ton of beautiful spring wildflowers.  The park was a new place for us and the ground was covered in a blanket of wildflowers and ramps. The forest smelled slightly like garlic from all the ramps. 

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After a long walk in the warm weather, I crave lighter foods and sometimes spicier foods. Pad (or sometimes called Pat or Phat) Thai definitely fits the bill. I ate Pad Thai once in Thailand. It was good, but it certainly wasn't my favorite dish I had there. But, it remains one of the most popular Thai dishes in the U.S. 

This was the first time I made this myself and we enjoyed it a lot. I used the recipe from Thai Food as a guide. I love this cookbook, but sometimes I take shortcuts or make substitutions because even with all the Asian markets around me, I can't always find every ingredient. Below is my adapted recipe which will serve two very hungry people.

Buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese

My readers know I love mac n' cheese. Even as I've been trying to eat less gluten and grains, macaroni and cheese remains one of my biggest weaknesses. I love to make it so many ways. 

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This mac n' cheese is something I've been wanting to make for a while now. We made some blue cheese burgers recently and had leftover blue cheese, so I knew the time had come to make a Buffalo chicken mac n' cheese. Now in Buffalo, we don't really call things "Buffalo" -- they aren't "Buffalo" wings, they're just chicken wings. But, for the sake of this blog and all my non-western NY readers, I'm calling this "Buffalo" (but don't you dare put any ranch dressing near it - blue cheese, please). 

Aside from the blue cheese, you must have a proper hot sauce, and some celery. For reasons that are pretty obvious from this blog, we don't eat chicken wings very often...maybe once a year we will go out for some (we do live very close to Duffs after all).

I really loved this dish. My husband was skeptical, but he really enjoyed it as well. You have to get a good flavor balance in your sauce and that is why I recommend adding your blue cheese and hot sauce slowly and tasting along the way to ensure you don't overpower this dish with either of those strong flavors. 

Serve this up while the weather is still chilly - it's perfect for a game day or a lazy Saturday night with a couple of beers.